Experian Marketing Services released some findings about search trends in the U.S. for the year. The firm finds that Facebook was the top search term for the fourth year, accounting for 4.13% of all searches (up 33% from 2011).
The data is based on the top 1,000 unfiltered search terms in the U.S. across over 60 search engines. It does not include mobile.
Four different variations of the term “facebook” were among the top 10, accounting for 5.62% of searches overall (up 27% from last year). The top two terms stayed the same from year to year. Behind Facebook was “youtube” again at number two.
The top ten in 2011 were:
1. facebook
2. youtube
3. facebook login
4. craigslist
5. facebook.com
6. yahoo
7. ebay
8. www.facebook.com
9. mapquest
10. yahoo.com
For this year, the list looked like this:
1. facebook
2. youtube
3. craigslist
4. facebook login
5. facebook.com
6. yahoo
7. ebay
8. www.facebook.com
9. mapquest
10. amazon
Notice that “amazon” moved into the top ten for the first time.
Experian says that analysis of the search terms revealed that social networking-related terms dominated the results, accounting for 6.03% of the top 50 searches, an increase of 44% compared to 2011.
Google terms, including “youtube,” accounted for 1.91%, a 20% increase from last year. New terms that entered the top 50 included: backpage, cool math games, fox news, pinterest and pof (an acronym for dating site Plenty of Fish).
“Navigational searches continue to dominate the top search results as users continue to visit their favorite sites via search engines instead of directly entering a web address into their browsers URL bar,” said Bill Tancer, GM of global research for Experian Marketing. “Single-word searches grew 16% in 2012 as a result of continued reliance on search engine’s suggested results. Other top 2012 searches reflected the ongoing infatuation with celebrities online.”
The terms “yahoo” and “ebay” have been in the top ten since the ranking was started back in 2006.
